TDEE vs MFP calories

turtle759

MFP says that my maintenance calories are 1,620 and the TDEE calculator says that my maintenance calories are 1,532. I wonder which is more accurate—any thoughts? 5’3”/not very active right now (SAHM/online college right now).

Poisonedpawn78

It doesn't matter, because neither is your individual reality. They are simply starting points and nothing more. You need to pick one and see your actual results over time so that you can calculate your real daily calorie goal.

Don't get stuck figuring out which lane you want to start the marathon in.

Figure out your weight loss/gain over the period of a month or more using either one of them. Then compare that to your daily calorie intake and see what your true goal is.

TavistockToad

They're pretty close so I wouldn't really worry.

cmriverside

As long as you know that Myfitnesspal assumes you will enter exercise into the Exercise tab and eat more on those days.

You must have entered no exercise and sedentary on both of them to get numbers so close together. (?) I mean, 88 calories in a day is well within the margin of error for logging. I've been doing this for 11 years with a digital food scale set to grams and I still accept that I make probably 200+ calories in errors daily.

Use one, be consistent. Adjust in two months if your results seem off. Doesn't matter which one.

Tacklewasher

1576?

As others have said, pick a starting point (I'd go 1600) and see how it goes for a couple of months. There are a number of formulas out there and it's all an approximation anyway,

robertw486

turtle759 wrote: »

MFP says that my maintenance calories are 1,620 and the TDEE calculator says that my maintenance calories are 1,532. I wonder which is more accurate—any thoughts? 5’3”/not very active right now (SAHM/online college right now).

It's so close that there is no sense in worrying about which one is closer. Pick one, and use your weight changes as feedback to fine tune over time. You could find out that both of them are off a little bit, since it's hard to account for very minor things that might impact your calorie burn.

Personally I'm not really consistent when it comes to working out, and one of my concerns was proper fueling on harder workout days. For that reason TDEE doesn't work for me nearly as well, as it would leave me in surplus some days, and deficit in others, but sometimes to an extend where the deficit isn't allowing proper recovery.

turtle759

Sounds good, thank you guys.